6 The Sunday Times May 29, 2022
BUSINESS
Christian Schreyer says to achieve
carbon-neutral status, councils will
have to turn to public transportThe UK railway is
far better than its
reputation — but it
is quite expensive
something,” he recalls. He went to work
for Deutsche Bahn just as the state-
owned train giant was being privatised,
and Schreyer decided he had found his
calling: “The more I used public trans-
port ... the more I liked it.”
After Deutsche Bahn, there was a spell
working in Poland and then a move to the
French transport operator Transdev. He
was seen as a good recruit for Go-Ahead
by analysts when he replaced long-stand-
ing chief David Brown last year.
Having worked all over Europe,
Schreyer is surprised by the British atti-
tude to its trains. “If you speak to people,
one could get the impression the UK rail-
way is the worst in the world, but it is
actually far better than its reputation
when you speak about punctuality ... reli-
ability and cleanliness. The only criticism
compared to other countries is that it’s
quite expensive,” he says.
Many Britons would agree, especially
as a cost-of-living crisis sweeps the coun-
try — but it’s not clear what Go-Ahead can
do about it now the DfT is calling the
shots and can set ticket prices.S
ome wonder why private operators
want to stay in a sector that is under
increasing government control.
Railway expert Christian Wolmar
notes that the margin on operator
contracts is only about 2 per cent: “Is it
worth Go-Ahead’s while being in this
game any more?” Many British firms have
left the railway already — Stagecoach, for
example, quit in a row about pension risk
being loaded onto the private sector.
That leaves mostly foreign, state-owned
transport giants bidding for contracts.
Schreyer insists Go-Ahead is “very
committed to the market... It’s a big part
of our DNA.” He would, though, like GBR
to provide incentives to companies like
his to bring in more passengers, in return
for bigger profits. To hark back to his beer
hall days, good customer service should
earn it a fatter tip.
Critics might argue this is a recipe for
the sort of muddle that GBR is trying to
escape — neither a privatised railway nor
a nationalised one. But Go-Ahead has to
present a compelling case for its share-
holders. The share price has rallied by
50 per cent this year, but at about £10, it is
only half what it was before Covid. Where
is the jam tomorrow in public transport?
Schreyer is targeting a 30 per cent rise
in revenues to £4 billion in “the medium
term”. He wants more foreign bus con-
tracts, although international rail has
proved costly for the company: it took a
£66 million provision for its service in
Norway last year.
Schreyer is not the only one to see pos-
itives in the sector. German infrastruc-
ture fund DWS is in the final stages of buy-
ing Stagecoach; Nordic operator Nobina
has just been bought by Britain’s Basalt
Infrastructure; and last week, First-the DfT to bring in full transparency ...
and to learn that similar behaviour must
not happen in the future.”
Schreyer, a clean-cut, athletic type
who speaks in softly accented English,
betrays his lawyerly training in this
guarded response; a fulsome apology, it
is not.
If the past is an uncomfortable subject
for Go-Ahead, the present is not much
rosier. Covid hammered the railways:
passenger journeys are about 30 per cent
down on pre-pandemic levels, with many
commuters shifting to flexible working.
Ministers spent £16 billion bailing out
the industry in the depths of the crisis,
and now they are left with a vastly expen-
sive train set that is not being fully used.
At the same time, they want to create a
new entity, Great British Railways (GBR),
which will control track and trains from
2024, hiring private sector operators on
“passenger service contracts”. Mean-
while, the railway faces its biggest indus-Christian Schreyer takes the wheel at train
and bus giant Go-Ahead as strikes,
takeovers and reforms grip the industry
The unions
must get
real and let
us cut costs
trial upheaval in decades: last week, the
powerful RMT union voted to strike at 13
train operating companies, and at Net-
work Rail, the body responsible for tracks
and signals.
The ballot, says Schreyer, was “prema-
ture”. “We have not even started the
negotiations with the unions,” he adds.
“I’m always a fan of, ‘let’s talk first’ and
then let’s speak about industrial action —
not the other way around.”
In fact, Govia was the only major line
not to have staff vote for a walkout, with
workers opting for “action short of a
strike”. Schreyer says he is “disappointed
that passengers across the country face
disruption just as we’re starting to
recover from the pandemic”, and urges
the RMT to “seek a swift resolution”.
He admits that operators have been
asked to look for cuts — or “optimisation
possibilities” — across the network, but
denies that this means compulsory
redundancies. “In certain areas, we have
problems finding enough staff.”
But the railway needs to become more
“digital”, Schreyer adds. Ticket-office
staff could be redeployed, he explains: “It
might be better to invest the money in
digital solutions, in ticket-vending
machines, in quality of services.”
He reinforces the point, for any union
leaders who might be reading: “The
labour has to adapt.”
Schreyer did not grow up dreaming of
running trains and buses. His mother was
a nurse, and his father a banker. He
started his career as a lawyer but realised
it wasn’t for him. “I wanted to createTOM STOCKILL FOR THE SUNDAY TIMESC
hristian Schreyer knows a
thing or two about difficult
journeys. While studying law
at Munich University, he
worked in a beer hall and a
Mexican restaurant. “We
sold pitchers of margaritas,
and by the end of the night
you had people dancing on
the tables,” he recalls.
Threading his way through the crowd
and delivering drinks on time and unspilt
was crucial: “The salary was low, so if you
wanted to have a good living, you needed
to earn a tip.”
These days, Schreyer is responsible for
ferrying people, not drinks, around as
chief executive of Go-Ahead Group, the
£450 million train and bus operator. But
the lesson on customer satisfaction still
applies. Since the pandemic upended
Britain’s rail network, Go-Ahead is no
longer a rail franchise operator, but a
contractor running trains for the Depart-
ment for Transport (DfT). That means it
has to keep ministers, as well as passen-
gers, happy — and, in recent times,
Go-Ahead has not been doing a good job.
Schreyer joined the FTSE 250 com-
pany in November, shortly after it was
stripped of the Southeastern network,
running trains in Kent and London,
because of an accounting scandal in
which it wrongly kept millions of pounds
of taxpayers’ money.
The route, which it operated with
France’s Keolis, was put back in govern-
ment control, while Go-Ahead had to
delay its accounts and pay back the £50
million it owed, including interest, plus a
£23 million fine. The chief financial offi-
cer walked the plank, and the company
was lambasted by transport secretary
Grant Shapps for a “serious breach of
good faith”.
Yet in March, just weeks after the fine
was announced, Go-Ahead’s contract to
run the Govia Thameslink Railway was
controversially renewed. This line, also
co-run with Keolis, encompasses cross-
London services, Great Northern, South-
ern and the Gatwick Express, and is the
biggest rail network in the UK.
What does Schreyer say to critics who
argue that, after the taxpayer was
fleeced, Go-Ahead should not be running
any of Britain’s trains? At first, he
demurs: “You must understand it’s diffi-
cult for me to comment on topics that
happened before I joined.” Then he tries
to put the matter in the past: “As a com-
pany, we said sorry for that behaviour.
We have co-operated very closely withINTERVIEW
JON YEOMANS
Group, the UK bus and train business,
had an offer from US private equity firm I
Squared. Peel Hunt analyst Alex Paterson
said the bidders were betting that conges-
tion and pollution would force more local
councils to invest in public transport and
discourage use of private cars. “These
infrastructure funds see a potential
golden age of public transport,” he said.
Schreyer cannot comment on whether
Go-Ahead might be next but, Paterson
says, given what’s happened elsewhere,
it would not be a surprise.
On Go-Ahead’s bus business, Schreyer
says he is excited by an upcoming
shake-up that will allow UK cities to run
services on a franchised basis, taking the
Transport for London model and apply-
ing it to Manchester or Liverpool.
Go-Ahead thinks it can make decent
returns from such contracts, even if they
are more tightly regulated
than the current free-for-all; it
is already a big operator of Lon-don buses. Indeed, Schreyer is speaking
to The Sunday Times from a bus garage in
Tottenham, north London, where ranks
of electric red double-deckers are
hooked up to charging points.
Although he says he is not anti-car, he
doesn’t have a vehicle of his own. “No
country will achieve carbon-emission
targets without supporting a strong shift
from individual car usage to public trans-
port,” he argues. “If you want a city
where it is good to live, that’s not a city
where cars are stuck in traffic jams and all
the space is covered by parked cars.”
Meanwhile, Schreyer is quickly learn-
ing the nuances of doing business in Brit-
ain. In Germany and the Netherlands,
people are very “direct”, he says: “Then
you have the French working culture,
where you speak a lot between the lines.
The UK is somewhere in between: it’s
more extroverted, quite emotional, but
... you need to listen carefully to under-
stand the message.”
He will be putting those language
skills to good use in the coming
months, especially if the RMT
has its way.THE LIFE OF
CHRISTIAN
SCHREYER
VITAL STATISTICS
Born: January 8, 1968
Status: married with two
teenage children
School:
Käthe Kollwitz Gymnasium,
Munich
University: law at
Ludwig Maximilian
University, Munich;
executive management at
Harvard
First job: bartender and
waiter at a Munich beer hall
and a Mexican restaurant
Pay: £550,000 plus
bonuses
Homes: London and Berlin
Car: none. He has three
bikes: electric, racing and
mountain
Favourite book: The
Hitchhiker’s Guide to
the Galaxy — in
German
Film: Django
Unchained
Music: the Rolling
Stones
Gadget: iPad
Drink: green tea
Watch: Apple Watch
Charity: RotaryInternational, Street Kids
Last holiday: FranceWORKING DAY
The chief
executive
of Go-
Ahead spends two to three
days a week visiting
operations. “I’m not the kind
of manager who sits at his
desk a lot.” He rises at 7:30,
has a cup of green tea and
spends the first hour or two
replying to emails. Then he
heads to the office or jumps
on a train for a site visit.DOWNTIME
Christian Schreyer loves
biking and “everything that
has to do with mountains”
— skiing, hiking and
climbing. He spends part of
his weekends taking his
daughter to play in football
matches.Django
Unchained, The
Hitch Hikers
Guide to the
Galaxy, an Apple
Watch and the
Rolling Stones
are favourites